Bible Work in Homeschooling

Bible study is so important in our daily lives. If we want to get to know our Creator, we have to read His book. We also want our children to read their Bible so that they can grow in their relationship with the Lord.
For children who go to public school, this has to be a separate time from their school work. Public schools don’t have Bible class, so this is something that they have to do on their own time. But, as homeschooling parents, we have the privilege of being able to incorporate Bible work into our children’s school schedule. We are able to pray before we start school and talk about how God is incorporated in everything that we do. Bible story, church work, and Bible study are actually subjects on my oldest son’s school list.
They get “homework” from their church classes so we want to make sure that that work is a priority for them, so we make sure that time is given for them to complete that work. As my children grow and change, so does their Bible study. My third grader’s Bible work looks a lot different from my 3 year old’s work.
My 3 year old’s Bible work consists of reading Bible story books as well as reading from his Bible. We talk about the stories, listen to the stories on cd and do activities that have to do with the Bible stories. He’s learning the basic Bible characters. His favorite happens to be David and Goliath. He’s always telling me how Goliath got hit in the face with a rock from David’s slingshot. He loves that part!
My 3rd grader’s Bible work looks a lot different. He is working through the Bible stories in the Rod and Staff “Bible Nurture and Reader Series” for his grade level. He looks up the vocabulary words, reads the story, and then writes about it. He fills in a worksheet that I made up, where he has to write the title, the main characters, the main idea, and two details about the story. Since he’s a vocal learner, he likes to tell me about the story and then write about it. This helps him to be able to understand what happens and firmly plant it in his mind before he is able to write.
We are working together through “What the Bible is All About for Young Explorers” by Gospel Light, for his Bible study. This works through each book of the Bible. This is able to teach him the writer, why it was titled that, location in the Bible, the main people involved, an outline of the book, the main events by chapter, when the events happened, where it all happened, as well as discoveries from the past and how this book fits in with Jesus. This is really giving him a great overview of the Bible and how everything fits together.
For Science, we are using Apologia’s “Exploring Creation with Astronomy”. This book shows astronomy through the creation point of view. It proves evolution is wrong and how God created the world. This has a notebooking journal that goes with it, which I highly recommend. It has been a fascinating study for both of us! It has been wonderful having a Science curriculum that I don’t have to worry about teaching my children the wrong information.
We have also just recently started to learn Greek. When I say “we”, I truly mean “we”. I don’t know Greek so we are learning this together, which my son thinks is pretty cool that mom is still learning, too. What does Greek have to do with the Bible, you say? Well, the New Testament was written in Greek, so it will become a great asset as we dig deeper into the Bible as it was written in its original language. With my husband being a preacher, he said that he researches the Greek all of the time in order to make sure that he is interpreting the Bible correctly. My son loves when it’s Greek time in school and my little one is learning as he listens from afar.
That moves me to another point. Even though I am working through, what it seems, as more Bible education with my older son than with my younger son, my younger son is listening and picking things up because he’s in the same room as we are. He’s listening and learning as he’s playing with his toys and I’m sitting with my third grader. For example, one day as we were working on our Greek, we said, “alpha”, and my 3 year old said, “beta”. We were shocked, but excited that he had been listening and learning even though he wasn’t directly involved.
The blessing with homeschooling is that we can involve Biblical teaching into anything we are doing. While we are doing Spelling, my son thinks of Biblical sentences to fit his spelling words into. It is just wonderful that we can fill our children’s lives with Christ and Biblical teaching. We are constantly talking about the Bible with our children. I wouldn’t change that for the world!